There was a movie that disturbed me when I was a child, called The Unborn 2 (1994), which featured infanticide. It really affected me as a child and sticks with me to this day. It's probably the reason I am scared of firearms. I watched that scene with my sister. We didn't watch the whole movie, only the scene in question in the maternity ward. I remember where I was when I watched that scene, in my parent's bedroom and my sister changed the channel, probably because she didn't want my parents catching us watching a horror movie. She did the same with The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), as well.

I don't know if it was based on a real-life case or not, but I could see something horrible like it happening in real-life. The sad truth is things like infanticide and the murder of children do happen in real-life. It's a touchy depraved subject, but one that needs to be commented on in horror films. Art imitates life, and it should, in my opinion, even if that truth is hard to deal with. I never finished the novel Pet Semetary, but I remember in the forward by Stephen King he mentions how they lived near a busy highway, where tanker trucks would pass through. Once his son was almost hit by a tanker truck and that incident had Stephen King wondering what if he hadn't reached his son in time.

Horror movies reflect our mortality and the horrors that are all around us, so for a horror movie to show that kind of menace is bold, but probably not a film I could stomach watching again. Gage's death in Pet Semetary was definitely traumatizing but it was realistic and that's what I love about Stephen King, is his ability to create genuinely funny moments and genuinely scary moments.

Don't see it mentioned but in Dawn of the Dead 2 kids are killed. Ok, Zombie kids, but still kids. Struck me when I saw it how unusual it is for kids to be killed in movies...unless they're teenagers of course, I mean, killing them is a staple of the horror genre!

George Romero did make mention of it in the commentary. You don't actually see the zombie kids get killed by Peter Washington (Ken Foree). George cuts away, quickly.

One child's death I don't think I see mentioned here is Karen Cooper's in Night of the Living Dead. She dies and becomes a zombie. Also, we see her zombie form get shot in the remake.

Then, in the Dawn of the Dead remake, we see that the little girl, Vivian, has become a zombie. In addition, there's the zombie baby.

Other child deaths I don't think anyone's mentioned yet are -

- Robin (the little girl in Prom Night who is scared so bad by an older group of kids that she falls out a window - prompting her twin brother to go on a killing spree 10 years later)

- The children in Village of the Damned (both versions have them blown up by a bomb) and the original's sequel, Children of the Damned. Granted these children were aliens and had killed people, but in the sequel, they aren't completely evil.

- Ralphie Glick (from Salem's Lot) is the vampire Barlow's first victim (and first turned) and Ralphie goes on to kill and turn his brother, Danny. (If you think about it, King's books and movies include a lot of children dying or going through terrible things...

- It
- Silver Bullet (the kid flying his kite)

- Newt (from Aliens) is found dead in the very beginning of Alien 3 and she is autopsied.

I agree with the idea that this is not done much because it would be "going too far", but I think there is another big reason. The kids dying aren't really dying. In other words, they are played by actors and...basically,.. if you want to show a little kid getting killed in a movie, you've got to get an actual little kid to act out the scene, get fake stabbed, fake cut-to-pieces, covered in fake blood, etc. and they may or may not be really mature enough to handle that.

-SPOILER- [recent IT movie] -- (highlight invisible/white text below...or if there is an actual spoiler tag I just don't see...please show me where/how to use it)-

Of course, if you've seen the recent adaptation of Stephen King's "It", Bill's little brother actually does act out some -him getting killed and maimed- scenes so...He does a great and very realistic job, but who knows what it might to do a small child psychologically to have the idea of having you're arm ripped off introduced to his field of possible things that could happen. Truth be told, though, I was hoping that they would show it this time, since they didn't show it in the made-for-tv movie version.

I'm not sure this is actually true or not, but I did hear once, that the little girl in the later Halloween movies (parts 4 and 5) who started out in the movies at maybe the age of 6 was so messed up by being in those movies that she started seeing, Michael Myers, everywhere and eventually was so freaked out that she locked herself in her home. She wasn't killed in the movies, but she was sure around some gruesome stuff in those films.

Heck, even that one filmmaker contest show that they had on tv a while back (don't remember the name, but Carrie Fisher was one of the judges) had this one guy who filmed this short film for the contest and he used identical twin boys to play one character. The character dies (or is already dead) in the film, and he had one of them lie in a coffin in one scene. The kid who was supposed to do it was terrified of lying in the coffin and I think they had to promise him something to finally get him to do it.

I don't mind when children die in a horror movie as long as it's important to the story, but I'm not the kind of person who enjoys seeing children get killed just for fun. If you're going to kill a child character in a horror movie then it should be disturbing and horrifying not tasteless. Like for example when a little kid becomes a zombie in a movie like Night of the Living Dead, that kind of thing serves to remind the audience of just how helpless kids are in a zombie apocalypse (and I can't think of any zombie movies I know of where a kid actually lives). But stuff like Nightmare on Elm Street is stupid to me because Freddy is portrayed as being funny, witty, and more likable than the children he murders! ...even if they are annoying teenagers played by 20 something year old actors.

The son's death in A Serbian Film was sad considering the situation and although he is shot off camera , the son's death in High Tension was sad too. I think child murder in films effects people the way it does is because its a sensitive subject just like animal killing. Children are considered innocent and not to mention most parents are sensitive to child violence because it automatically makes them see their own child in that situation.

Night of the Living Dead (The Cooper's daughter becoming a zombie)
Dawn of the Dead original (the two little boy zombies locked in the gas station bathroom)
Dawn of the Dead remake (the little girl next door who became a zombie and the unborn baby who also became a zombie)
Land of the Dead (the little boy zombie in a suit)
Diary of the Dead (the one girl's little brother who became a zombie)
28 Days Later (the infected little boy in the restaurant who gets killed by the main character and the dead baby being held by a dead woman on the floor)
Hell of the Living Dead (the little boy with the bickering parents who became a zombie)
Night of the Comet (the little boy zombie in the one character's house)
The Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (the one character's little brother who gets eaten)
Resident Evil Apocalypse (the little kid zombies in the school)
Children of the Corn movies (in every movie there is always a kid getting killed though most of them are evil).
Village of the Damned (all the evil kids eventually get killed in the end)
The Shining (the twin little girl ghosts who were chopped to death by their father)
The Ring (Samara herself was the ghost of a little girl murdered by her parents)
Ju-On/The Grudge (Toshio was the ghost of Kayako's little boy who was murdered by his father along with his mother)
Jeepers Creepers 2 (a young boy gets snatched away and killed at the start of the movie)
IT (Pennywise the Clown kills and eats a lot of young children)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (Freddy was a child serial killer and the little girls who appear in nightmares are implied to be some of his younger victims)
Pumpkinhead (the main character's son accidentally gets killed by racing teenagers)

But yeah, you guys see what I mean about how kids always die in zombie movies? Lol!